Tag Archives: Cowboy Scat

Usual Rubbish

Lookout. Below.

Okay, now where was I? Wait, don’t tell me. I was complaining about…. something…. No, not the song “Something”. I rather fancy that. Something to do with Web servers.

F'shaw
BG goes all traditional-like.

No matter. Here we are, back to the blog. What’s happening at the mill? Lots. Working on the January podcast, now days behind schedule. Later every month, right? That’s the natural course of business here in Big Green – land. Still…. our first installment of THIS IS BIG GREEN should be worth the wait, if you like weird, asinine, and abysmally non-commercial media content. True hallmarks of the TIBG brand.

Smell something burning? Neither do I. But (and this is the point) we bloody well should, and here’s why … Marvin (my personal robot assistant) is supposed to be thinking up a viable creation myth for our upcoming collection of songs attributed to and written in tribute to cousin Rick Perry, governor of Texas. The album – Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick – is such a monumental event in our lives, it fairly demands a creation myth of its very own. As such, we handed that task off to Marvin, and by rights the smoke should be pouring out of his brass visor as we speak.

It is not, my friends. What can I tell you? So look, we’ll just have to cook it up ourselves, I guess, without the help of robotian inspiration. We’re thinking something along the lines of “The Creeping Terror”. Cowboy Scat is all that remains of an epic musical written about the arc of cousin Rick’s political career. Only on the eve of its production, the script was lost over the side of a pleasure craft on Lake Tahoe. Such a tragedy!

Okay, well … we can flesh that out a bit. Give us time. Maybe Marvin can work with …. on second thought, maybe not. Scratch that, friends.

Usual Rubbish

Readying.

The studio is stuffed to the gills already. Yes, it has gills! How do you think it breathes underwater? Didn’t you go to grammar school? Oh, right.

Sometimes I forget that Marvin (my personal robot assistant) isn’t an undereducated human like myself. He is, in fact, a mechanical man. Much must be explained to him, and what can’t be explained must be programmed in by force, if necessary. That’s the lot of a robot assistant, I’m afraid. Work, work, work.

Anyhow… the quintessential American holiday is now over. (We also survived that day that comes before Black Friday … what do they call it? Thanksgiving?) Time to fold up the balloons, disassemble the parade floats, and send the marching bands marching home. While many find the Macy parade enjoyable, it is not a simple matter to serve as the end point of that annual extravaganza. Just finding enough space to store deflated Spiderman is proving more challenging than you might imagine. Sure, without air in his ass, he’s smaller, but – and this is important – not all that much smaller. And then there’s those freaking Smurfs.


As you can imagine, every nook and cranny in the mill is stuffed with gear from the parade. You can hardly turn around in the studio these days. Still, we press on. Matt and I did a couple more mixes for Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick this past week. Gonna be a bit hard with all these deflated balloons lying around, but we’ll manage. Fortunately, many of Rick’s songs are country-like numbers, so the mixing is fairly simple. We take a naturalist approach – not too much FX, not too much compression. Just record it clean, mix it pure, and pour it into a tall, clear glass to check for impurities before quaffing it down. Pure audio ambrosia, that’s what I’m talking about. Sure ding.

We’re also furiously preparing for the holiday episode of THIS IS BIG GREEN. Last year raised the bar a bit – two hours of pure horseshit. Not sure how to top that without a bigger shovel, but we’ll try.

Usual Rubbish

Songageddon.

Are you all right? You sure? Good, good. Yeah, we’re okay. Head above water, you know. Always a good thing.

Oh, sorry. I was just on the phone with Mitch Macaphee, our mad science adviser, who wisely chose this week to travel to Madagascar for a conference on … I don’t know, monster-making best practices, something like that. Good time to leave, what with the hurricane and all that. Up here at the Cheney Hammer Mill, we implemented our disaster preparedness plan. Basically that involves closing the windows, drawing the curtains, and blocking our ears. Occasionally someone lights a candle. (When it comes to disasters, we’re not good.)

Fortunately, the gods of rock and water were smiling down upon us this past Monday-Tuesday. That monster storm took an extreme left hook and missed us clean, somehow. Not that you could tell that was the case by looking at this Hammer Mill. It appears as though it’s been through hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes and pestilence. (Some would argue we qualify as pestilence, but what do they know? Them and their stinking badges.) One could hardly imagine how this place would handle high winds and higher water, and here we are on the banks of the mighty Mohawk River, just waiting to get clobbered.

We didn’t have anything like a hurricane party. Still working on our new album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. Matt and I have been mixing for the most part over the last few weeks, but this week we worked on a new Rick song, possibly the closer for the album. To my count, that makes about 47 Rick Perry songs written and recorded over the past year. (That may be a little high, but then…. so are you, most likely. That’s right – I’m looking at YOU, stoner!) If you want to do your own unofficial census, just play back some of our podcast episodes from the last year. We’ve been posting rough drafts since last September or so – half-recorded songs, to be embellished later. Why do this? Input! We want to hear from you. (That’s right, stoner … I’m talking to you…)

Hope you got through the storm in one piece. I’d better get back to Mitch. Don’t want to keep him on hold too long, or he might invent something dangerous.